Marsh. Leaves. By P. H. Emerson. (D. Nutt.)—These sketches of
life, human and other, in the marshes are evidently the work of a man who has closely observed the creatures about which he writes. His style is, in our judgment, ambitious and wanting in simplicity. What in the world is the good of writing, d propos of a " Dike Fire," " the fires spent to-day breathe into lives unborn a virtue more precious than all the thought of the ages—in sooth, the principal blessing, that man should go down and love and live, and wrestle and die" ? Why drag in, by the head and shoulders, this piece of rebellious animalism ? For if it means anything, it means that man the animal stands above man the thinker. If the writer would regard with a more simple mind what he describes, and think less of himself, ho would do better.
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